WindowOpener
pacifisticuffs
Sorry for the confusion on the guild member IDs. Here's a bit of an explanation.
So for our guild users table, there's a forever-incrementing ID column that is used globally across all of guilds. It starts at 1 and goes 3,5,7,9,11, etc., and it has nothing to do with your Gaia user ID, nor your guild's ID. Think of it as something like this:
+-----------------+---------+----------+
| Guild_Member_ID | User_ID | Guild_ID |
+-----------------+---------+----------+
| 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 3 | 1 | 3 |
| 5 | 3 | 5 |
| 7 | 3 | 1 |
| 9 | 7 | 1 |
| 11 | 7 | 3 |
| 13 | 3 | 3 |
+-----------------+---------+----------+
So the Guild_Member_ID keeps incrementing, regardless of the user_id or guild_id. But since it's sequential, it just helps you get an idea of the order in which people joined.
Hopefully that's a little bit more clear?
So for our guild users table, there's a forever-incrementing ID column that is used globally across all of guilds. It starts at 1 and goes 3,5,7,9,11, etc., and it has nothing to do with your Gaia user ID, nor your guild's ID. Think of it as something like this:
+-----------------+---------+----------+
| Guild_Member_ID | User_ID | Guild_ID |
+-----------------+---------+----------+
| 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 3 | 1 | 3 |
| 5 | 3 | 5 |
| 7 | 3 | 1 |
| 9 | 7 | 1 |
| 11 | 7 | 3 |
| 13 | 3 | 3 |
+-----------------+---------+----------+
So the Guild_Member_ID keeps incrementing, regardless of the user_id or guild_id. But since it's sequential, it just helps you get an idea of the order in which people joined.
Hopefully that's a little bit more clear?
So, if my ID in this guild is 979448, then my joining this guild was the 979448th act of guild-joining to occur on Gaia?
A new range of ID numbers did seem like a weird approach to take, but you explained it and it's not all bad. It produces some serious trivia. cool The fact you retrieved that much info is awesome, as is your new retrieval of last post dates.
I'm a fan of the new grid layout - it's nothing flashy, but it's tidy and efficient. It's recognisable from other parts of the site (mainly the areas from My Gaia) so this is more development in bringing guilds into the fold. If the GGN's problem could be summarised in a sentence, it would be that it has fallen behind and is increasingly isolated. These aesthetic changes are hugely important and welcomed!
On that note, the grey crosshatch background and the new Guilds icon and title font are now in command of the page. That's cool. The new Guilds uniform also seems to include registry search boxes. Eh, why not? But they do look just as out of place as they do on the landing page, mainly because of the contrast between the white field and the dark grey background. Maybe the field could become a light grey, or the search boxes could be enclosed as a 'section' with their own light grey background?
The Mod Panel is still essentially a list more than a 'panel,' or a 'dashboard' kind of thing. I'd love to see this changed sometime in the future, because the features could be very helpfully fleshed out. But for now, at least it's still logical and familiar. The drop-down menu is a nice touch, as it does save the awkwardness of clicking 'back' from the various sections.
The simple improvements to the 'Invite Users' page are so welcome. There's still room there for more options, like inviting more than 10 users, or using BBCode in invitations, or searching for members to invite. This is a much friendlier page now, though.
Bringing all the logs together in one place was a smooth move. And in this case, the aesthetic facelift is more than just identity-consistent but also a huge bonus for actually reading the logs. The information is so much clearer.
The Guild Settings page is unchanged, but it's worth commenting on the yellow-boxed tips below each field. Like the new info sneakily included in the Guild Forums page, this actually does help a lot of people who are using the page for the first time.
The Forums page is also updated and it looks much neater.
One thing I'm not so sure about is the blue box that was added to the top of all guild forum pages recently, and now appears in the Mod Panel. It's more at home in the Mod Panel than elsewhere, but it still lacks cohesion with the rest of the page. Maybe this is partly because it can potentially feature a long string of text that is probably the only full paragraph on the page. If it could be compartmentalised somewhere, it might be less annoying and maybe even more potent. It reminds me of when "Welcome to Gaia Online!" and a tagline about Gaia being an online hangout was included in the site header. There's some information that doesn't add anything to a page, even if it's somehow relevant, and there's space for it.
The new member list is noteable for the major new functionality of arranging names by posts, levels and join date (well, close enough!), plus the addition of last post and join date info. The tiny avatar thumbnails are nice. Maybe they could be placed before the names so that they are aligned? I find it funny for some reason that arranging by "levels" ranks the captain last on page 277 XD, but that's actually fine because the reverse is the default. (Although this isn't true for the "last post" criteria...) There is a slight sense that the page is unfinished, as the alignments aren't perfect and neither the rows nor columns are distinguished.
Overall, every single improvement is beneficial. And taking on the Mod Panel and member list is pretty substantial and hugely appreciated, especially as you deliver both front-end and backend changes in the one update (no doubt this influences how much notice and appreciation you generally receive from us!). Without trying to put a damper on all the wonderful improvements, though... I hope this isn't all of them. :XP: It looks like some significant changes have been made, and some good foundations laid for future updates. But the changes in functionality so far have been well-chosen but minimal. Not in terms of development investment, I'm sure, but in terms of usefullness. The member list searching is the only tool with added functionality. The structure of the Mod Panel, as well as its contents, operate better, but no more extensively than before. So my impression is that this is a major milestone, but not the finished product.
This sounds really ungrateful, if it in fact it is intended as the finished product. sweatdrop So I'll end by emphasizing again that the changes will make the use of the existing tools much quicker and easier and more pleasant. The member list enhancements will doubtless be put to good use in satisfying curious and snoopy members everywhere. And your hard work and communication with us is, as always, deeply appreciated. heart
I can't stress enough how long these updates take We started out thinking we could tackle the ENTIRE moderator panel in about a month (remember the team has 1.5 back end devs and 1 front end dev) but after the guys looked at the code, we could only bite off what we did here.
The goal is to eventually have all of the panels look the same, of course. But to be blunt, we need to see some uptake in guild activity to justify the work going forward. My hope was these changes (starting from the guild landing page, bug fixes, and through the mod. panel changes and auto-accept) would spark an increase in guild activity and engagement.
I'll be looking at the stats in the next weeks to see what happens. As always, I appreciate the constructive feedback, WindowOpener. wink
